Charlie Wilson's War

Charlie Wilson's War: The Movie. Charlie Wilson is a real person and the character that Julia Roberts plays in the movie is a real person too. The story is a real one but modified slightly by Hollywood. However, it is a powerful story because up until now not many people knew Charlie Wilson's story.

Up until now Osama Bin Laden and those who actually got bloody fighting the old Soviet Union took the credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union (at least in the Islamic world). So this true story of U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson, a liberal democrat representing Texas in the 1980's takes a lot of wind out of Osama Bin Laden's sails.

Do we live in a safer world now the Soviet Union is gone. I don't know. We definitely live in a much more fragmented world than before. It was as if from 1950 until 1990 the world ran on only two tires: Democracy and Communism, then the Communist tire went flat and the world has been going in circles ever since. Things haven't made much sense since 1990 to those of us who actually lived through the 40 years of Hell that the Cold War was!